By Megan Finnerty
Asst. Campus Editor

Representatives from 15 international and national trade organizations will meet at Purdue Wednesday through Friday to set priorities and objectives for the Global Trade Analysis Project.

This meeting of the Global Trade Analysis Consortium will determine the agenda for the project's research focus, programs and initiatives for next year. The project maintains the world's most complete database and computer modeling software for analyzing world trade issues, according to Tom Hertel, the director of the Center for Global Trade Analysis.

The center is housed in Purdue's department of agricultural economics and includes researchers from Belgium to Zimbabwe. The researchers contribute findings, data and money that keep the center functioning.

"We have training sessions, and one of the most important things we do is maintain and share a database that describe global economic activity, trade, production and consumption," said Hertel. "For instance, the database describes the extent to which the United States exports pork to Korea."

The center helps agencies attempt to answer complex questions relating to trade policy and environmental issues by examining the database of statistics and other research findings. According to Hertel, it is like an international public service organization for governments and public policy-making groups.

Although there are only 15 representatives coming to the consortium, which has more than 400 members, Hertel insisted that number of people was enough because those people represent many different groups and organizations all at once.

For example World Bank will be represented by Will Martin, its manager of trade research group, will speak on behalf of all developing countries.

And, according to Hertel, the smaller number of people allows the consortium to get more things done.

"This type of meeting is a roll up your sleeves and get involved in developing solutions and agenda issues type of thing," he said. "If you have a many more people than that, it is hard to accomplish things."

They will be discussing topics that are policy oriented so many representatives have the interest of large international and national governmental agencies in mind. The European Commission, World Trade Organization, World Bank, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and groups representing the governments of the United States, Japan, Australia and several European countries will be in attendance to set research priorities, determine what courses to offer each spring and how to update the database and computer model.